The above chart taken from TropicalStormRisk.com today may be an indication that the First April (9th - 12th) "R4" period, highlighted by Piers Corbyn at the start of this month is now underway.

The following report from SpaceWeather.com confirms a very large area of the Sun has become active...more to follow

FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: Solar activity is low, but a fast-growing sunspot could break the spell of quiet. AR1718 has more than doubled in size during the past 48 hours as shown in this movie from the Solar Dynamics Observatory [Click source link for Video]. The magnetic field of AR1718 is rapidly changing and therefore prone to instabilities. If it criss-crosses and reconnects--bang! A solar flare could occur. Because of the sunspot's central location on the solar disk, any eruptions would be Earth-directed.

Forecasters with the JTWC as well as the Tropical Cyclone Centre of La Reunion called for further strengthening, culminating in at least Category 2 hurricane equivalent status by Thursday...click source for more.

Margaret Thatcher was the first leader to warn of global warming - but also the first to see the flaws in the climate change orthodoxy

A persistent claim made by believers in man-made global warming – they were at it again last week – is that no politician was more influential in launching the worldwide alarm over climate change than Margaret Thatcher. David Cameron, so the argument runs, is simply following in her footsteps by committing the Tory party to its present belief in the dangers of global warming, and thus showing himself in this respect, if few others, to be a loyal Thatcherite.

The truth behind this story is much more interesting than is generally realised, not least because it has a fascinating twist. Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on "human-induced climate change".

Hadley then linked up with East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to become custodians of the most prestigious of the world's surface temperature records (alongside another compiled by Dr Hansen). This became the central nexus of influence driving a worldwide scare over global warming; and so it remains to this day – not least thanks to the key role of Houghton (now Sir John) in shaping the first three mammoth reports which established the IPCC's unequalled authority on the subject.

“The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer. With the lack of warming and the failure to shift the climate debate to “extreme weather”, warmists are now losing once stalwart members of the media in promoting man-made climate fears. These are not good times for the promoters of global warming. Earth is failing to follow global warming predictions and the new study claiming current temperatures are the “hottest ever” may be facing a full scientific retraction. The great warmist retreat has officially begun.”

“ONE clear thing we can say about 2012-2013 Arctic Sea Ice Extent is that it shows the most extreme variation of all in the last 11 years. This and other extreme events and changes are predicted aspects of the developing Mini Ice Age now upon us - associated with our WeatherAction Solar-Lunar predicted wild jet-stream shifts and specific events; none of which can be comprehended or predicted by the delusional CO2 ‘theory’.

Please note that the Ransom Style Book will no longer recognize the phrase Hooverville Follies. Just as the Associated Press has axed the term Illegal Immigrant, we have replaced the term Hooverville Follies with a more apt phrase: Undocumented Intelligence. Thank you.

Look, I’m not the one who declares every weather event a product of climate change. What I object to is that many scientists and most members of the media write ill-informed opinion pieces that they wrap in the fish paper of scientific discourse. And then if one disagrees with them, they pretend like we’re just too stupid to understand basic science.

For example, last year I wrote about scientists who were trying to make the case that polar bear cannibalism was more prevalent than previously understood – thanks to our friend, global warming. The basis of these “scientific” assertions was 3 (three) pictures that were taken “from the decks of ecotourism and research boats anchored a few hundred yards away.”

Getting past the fact that the scientist in question was the guy who waaaaay undercounted polar bears, setting off the “Oh my God. Those cute polar bears will ALL die!” hysteria, I don’t think you can actually make a scientific case of increased polar bear cannibalism without an underpinning of science.

But that doesn’t stop Global Warming Islamists from argue on behalf of utterly stupid science.

I don’t doubt that the earth is warmer than at some time in the past; and there likely is some man-caused component to it. But the dire predictions, based on flawed models of the alarmists, which have been going on three decades now, frankly have not come to fruition. It’s time for the global warming crowd to admit that there is something about their science that they have fundamentally wrong.

Should Michael Mann be given the electric chair for having concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph – the Hockey Stick – in the history of junk science?

Should George Monbiot be hanged by the neck for his decade or so's hysterical promulgation of the great climate change scam and other idiocies too numerous to mention?

Should Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles for the role he has played in the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer and the diversion of scarce resources into pointless projects like all the eyewateringly expensive desalination plants built as a result of his doomy prognostications about water shortages caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?

It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is – *regretful sigh* – no. First, as anyone remotely familiar with the zillion words I write every year on this blog and elsewhere, extreme authoritarianism and capital penalties just aren't my bag. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it would be counterproductive, ugly, excessive and deeply unsatisfying.